The Biochemistry Challenge to Darwin

American Thinker ^ | 11/23/2019 | By John Dale Dunn, MD, JD

[SeekAndFind]

The commenters responses to my book review of Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose, by Physical Chemist, Spectrometrist Researcher Dr. Marcos Eberlin were, in many cases, well informed and insightful, but one extraordinary commentary was provided by Dr. Ronald Cherry of  East Tennessee, who is board certified in four specialties of medicine and an energetic researcher in matters of biochemical cellular physiology and micro anatomy and physiology.

Dr. Cherry provided me with a commentary  titled “Zero Probability for Self-Generated Life” that I found compelling and worth summarizing and discussing for the many who are interested in the debate on the origination of life and the appearances of species of life, the question—does the Darwin Theory of Origin of Species hold up to modern scientific analysis that includes the microanatomy and microphysiology as well as the active complex biochemistry of the magic that is a living cell?

The life functions of a single human cell, as described by Dr. Cherry, are far more complex than the world's most capable supercomputer, and impossible for man to duplicate using non-living materials due to the complexity and the sub-microscopic size and fragility of biochemical and cellular elements that are critical to the development of more complicated functional living things, but also that provide for maintaining the survival of the “lesser” forms of cellular life.  The complexity and rapidity of life-requiring DNA transcription into messenger RNA, and then ribosomal translation into enzymes and proteins of structure and function challenges human understanding.

The living cell is enclosed in a protective membrane that is a perfect place for all the proteins and the other biochemically active molecules to perform chemical reactions to achieve important functions

[Moonman62]

The life functions of a single human cell, as described by Dr. Cherry, are far more complex than the world’s most capable supercomputer, and impossible for man to duplicate using non-living materials due to the complexity and the sub-microscopic size and fragility of biochemical and cellular elements that are critical to the development of more complicated functional living things, but also that provide for maintaining the survival of the “lesser” forms of cellular life.

...

Evolution is an incredible tool. That’s why God uses it and humans don’t yet understand all of it.

[Thommas]

I believe that what Dr. Cherry has said is that evolution, for that concept to be valid, had to originate somewhere and from something. With DNA being the fragile building block that requires DNA enzymes and proteins to survive, the “start” of evolution never gets out of the blocks.

[Born to Conserve]

And when you die, you go to heaven and get a big mansion, bigger than everybody else’s.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: And when you die, you go to heaven and get a big mansion, bigger than everybody else’s.

Where is this written?

[Honest Nigerian]

Where is this written.
*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*
Why it is written on Free Republic. By an uninformed person. An uninformed person who is “without excuse” at that.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Exactly. The cell is far to complex to spontaneously form. If life required just 200 amino acids to get together in a certain order, the odds of it happening is something on the order of 1.78 x 10^378 to 1.

[dadfly]

in other words, since DNA, cannot be assembled without its cell, and a cell cannot function (multiply, live) without its DNA, the first living cell couldn’t have existed without an external agent of causation, a Designer/Creator. QED.

corollary: since living cells exist and multiply, there was a first cell. therefore the Cause or Creator of the first cell existed before the first cell.

because of this and much more, such a Creator, i believe, would rightly be called the Way, the Life and the Truth.

[Kalamata]

>>SeekAndFind, you quoted: "The commenters responses to my book review of Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose, by Physical Chemist, Spectrometrist Researcher Dr. Marcos Eberlin were, in many cases, well informed and insightful, but one extraordinary commentary was provided by Dr. Ronald Cherry of East Tennessee . . . "

What Eberlin's book and Cherry's commentary emphasizes and reinforces is the universal symbiotic nature of life. Each and every part of a fully-functional organism replies on the existence of every other part, rendering the concept of an organism existing by chance to be, well, irrational.

Eberlin's book concludes with this statement:

"The fathers of modern science—Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Boyle, and many others—saw design in the universe and, indeed, were inspired to discover the laws of nature because of their belief in a transcendent law-giver.

"As for that wondrous journey of discovery that they launched, there seems to be no end in sight. Nobel laureate J. J. Thomson—one of the giants of early modern physics, the discoverer of the electron, and the father of mass spectrometry, my field of expertise—beautifully conveyed this optimistic, open-ended view of science. I can think of no better words for concluding a book about a world filled with evidence of foresight, words as true today as when Thomson penned them in the early twentieth century:

"The sum of knowledge is at present, at any rate, a diverging, not a converging, series. As we conquer peak after peak we see in front of us regions full of interest and beauty, but we do not see our goal, we do not see the horizon; in the distance tower still higher peaks, which will yield to those who ascend them still wider prospects, and deepen the feeling, the truth of which is emphasized by every advance in science, that 'Great are the Works of the Lord.' "

[Marcos Eberlin, "Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose." Discovery Institute Press, 2019, pp.120-121]

Cherry's commentary concludes in this manner:

"Cellular components cannot exist without the pre-existence of DNA genes, yet viable DNA genes cannot exist without the cellular apparatus. DNA genes must come first, before any of the other cellular components for which it codes, yet DNA genes can't be made, maintained, or function in nature without them. It therefore becomes self-evident that living cells cannot self-create, so the only rational, i.e. scientific, alternative explanation for cellular life is that cells were created intact – that DNA genes were created at the same time as the protein enzymes, ribosomes, mitochondria, other organelles, cell membranes, enzymatic membrane receptors and enzymatic membrane electrolyte channels, and that a large amount of information was simultaneously encoded into the DNA during its initial assembly – the information required for maintenance and reproduction of cellular life. Self-assembled cellular life is an irrational idea – belief requires a religious level of faith which contradicts science. Created cellular life requires a Creator – belief requires a religious level of faith which is compatible with science." [Ronald R. Cherry, "Zero probability for self-generated life." Renew America, Nov 14, 2019]

Mr. Kalamata

[ronnie raygun]

Much like our two legged rats of today who feel they are God and understand everything in this world. We as intelligent humans with a soul realize there is more to life we yet don’t understand and may never until its our time to go home

[D Rider]

Your talking starting with pre made amino acids. Put 10^378:1 into perspective there are 10^89 atomic particles in the universe if you include photons. And there are 10^18 seconds. The average size protein has about 600 amino acids and the smallest human chromosome has 1 million.

[Rock N Jones]

John 14 (KJV)- Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.In my Father’s house are many mansions:if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

2 Corinthians 5 (NLT)- For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands. 2 We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing. 3 For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies.

[_Jim]

re: “The Biochemistry Challenge to Darwin”

It’s like, NONE of these people have heard of, are aware of, genetics, and how seemingly different species even contain SOME IDENTICAL DNA.

Can one call these people “phrenologists”?

[Blood of Tyrants]

But it’s all by accident, they tell us. And for no explainable reason, those elements got together and formed amino acid molecules, which got together to form proteins, which got together to form chromosomes, which came to life. And then that living cell got more and more complex until the single cell creature became a human.

All of which violates Newton’s Second Law of Thermodynamics which states that any isolated system ALWAYS degenerates to a more disorganized state.

[Kalamata]

>>Jim wrote, “It’s like, NONE of these people have heard of, are aware of, genetics, and how seemingly different species even contain SOME IDENTICAL DNA.”

What is the implication of your statement, Jim?

Mr. Kalamata

[_Jim]

re: “What is the implication of your statement, Jim?”

The majority of objectors to Darwin seem to be totally unknowledgeable when it comes to DNA, and instead insist on studying outward manifestation of traits of whatever is being ‘studied’, hence, “phrenology”.

[Kalamata]

>>Jim wrote: “The majority of objectors to Darwin seem to be totally unknowledgeable when it comes to DNA, and instead insist on studying outward manifestation of traits of whatever is being ‘studied’, hence, “phrenology”.”

Where did you get the notion that the major objectors to Darwin are unknowledgeable, Jim? From what I have read in the literature, all modern research of the genome contradicts the possibility of chance, as theorized by Darwin. In fact, I have not read a single paper that empirically supports evolution. Not one. Do you know of any?

Mr. Kalamata